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Church and borough at odds over food pantry

The pantry hosted by the Christ Episcopal Church serves 400 families a month. The high volume is creating a strain on borough employees.

STROUDSBURG, Pa. — Friday was food delivery day at Christ Episcopal Church in Stroudsburg. Volunteers with the church's food pantry were met with a new roadblock.

The parking lot is owned by the borough and is used for employee parking.

The borough blocked off its parking lot that the church has been using to bring in food deliveries twice a month.

"The truck usually drops it off within 20 minutes, and when the truck is done dropping off, it takes 45 minutes to an hour. We are able to bring everything in. By 2 o'clock, we are out of here. That is not happening today," said food pantry co-manager Debby Campbell.

So, volunteers got to work with hand trucks and carts, hauling everything from the church's parking lot across the street—which turned out to be a challenge, especially when it came to taking the stairs.

"We have food that is coming in that is time-restrictive, needs to be in the refrigerator by a certain time, so we are hurrying up. Luckily, the frozen truck came first," explained Campbell.

Fr. Bruce Gowe says the food pantry has operated out of the church for many years. Within the last year, volunteers went from serving 30 families to 400.

"Food insecurity continues to be a problem in our county, and we are meeting a need," said Fr. Gowe.

Borough officials say there have been issues for months with the food pantry, which ultimately led them to cut off access to the parking lot altogether.

"Our employees go out all the time doing code enforcement issues. I have meetings, so we are in and out of the parking lot all of the time. So because of the increasing amount of people they are serving, they are in the parking lot for a long time, and we can't do our jobs," said Borough Manager Larry Kopp.

Both sides have different views on what the possible solutions could be moving forward.

"Maybe this will bring them to the table and come up with a solution, a permanent solution, because this is not a permanent solution, obviously. We want to help our residents, but we also want to do things safely," said Kopp.

"The only way forward is to let us use it two or three hours every other Friday. It's not huge when you are serving over 400 families," said Fr. Gowe.

Pantry managers say no matter what, they will find a way to continue serving the community.

Stroudsburg Borough Council provided Newswatch 16 with this written statement in part: 

"Bottom line is that this location is not suitable for a high-volume food pantry. It causes a dangerous situation with unloading of food and food pick-up; traffic is backed up on 7th and Sarah Streets due to violations of parking ordinances, and during food pick-up, fire department trucks have been parked in, not allowing them to respond to calls for assistance. The Borough building is in a residential neighborhood, and is not suited for the unloading of tractor trailers on the street nor the large number of clients parking cars and coming to pick up food from the pantry."

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